“Sure,” I reply. Part of me wonders if it’s my sense of justice that said yes or my ego refusing to accept that I can be fooled.

“Excellent. We have a plane leaving in twenty minutes from the airfield. There’s a seat on it for you. We’re sending some of our forensic people out there to assist the Michigan office.”

“Excuse me? Plane? Michigan? Twenty minutes?”

“Sorry. I couldn’t get them to hold the plane any longer. They want to get there before nightfall. We have only a few hours before they begin the excavation. Everyone is onboard waiting for you.”

“Excavation?”

Ailes puts a finger to his lips. “Let’s not spoil anything. I think you’ll do your best if you form your own thoughts. Just remember, as per the assistant director’s suggestion, you’re only there as an adviser. Still up for it?”

I agree, but feel like it was a setup all along to get me to say yes.

4

TWENTY MINUTES AGO I was in Ailes’s office. Now I’m sitting in the last row of an FBI jet flying toward Michigan. Six other agents, specialists in forensics, are in front of me making small talk about baseball games and what colleges their kids are applying to. I don’t know any of them or have anything to offer the conversation. I was given polite smiles as I boarded the jet, but that was the extent of things. They look like a closed group. I get the impression they weren’t too thrilled about being kept on the tarmac for me. Explaining it wasn’t my fault is pointless.

After the seat belt sign is off, I take a trip to the rear lavatory to try to freshen myself up. At least that’s what I pretend to myself I’m doing. The rear section of seats has been ripped out to make way for several large containers of equipment. I want to get a look at them to at least get an idea of what we’re heading into. I know I could just ask someone, but I don’t want my cluelessness to get back to Ailes, much less show the others here how out of the loop I really am. Nobody needs to know how out of place I am. They’ll figure that out for themselves soon enough.

MY GRANDFATHER, my father and my uncle would perform mentalism as part of their acts—pretending to read someone’s mind. If you wanted an example of their different personalities, watching them try to do the same thing was illuminating.

During an interview, Grandfather would excuse himself to use the restroom and flirt with the coat check girl so he could rifle through a reporter’s jacket for ticket stubs, receipts, sometimes even a lover’s note. Father liked gimmicks. They were safe. He’d slip a credit card carbon under a notepad and have you write down a word, then crumple the paper. He’d take the notepad back and look for the impression when nobody was watching. Uncle Darius took a different approach. Purely analytical. He’d look at your shoes, your wedding band. He’d watch what you ate, then he’d make a deduction. It’d be phrased like a question if it was a miss. His technique was similar to those of psychics. He could tell in a glance if your dog nipped at your shoes or if your five-year-old spilled ketchup on your tie.